Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Steve and Peggy Arnold, retirees
armed with outrage and a sandwich board, pick spots to stake out
on sidewalks every day as they gather signatures to force
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker out of office.

The Arnolds, who live in Madison, the capital, have
collected more than 1,200 signatures in the past four weeks amid
a statewide effort to bring off the third gubernatorial recall
in U.S. history.

“We’ve only missed one day,” said Peggy Arnold, 62, a
former social-studies teacher and counselor undergoing
chemotherapy for breast cancer.

Wisconsin will be going into a New Year that resembles the
current one -- torn over the actions of Walker, 44, the first-term Republican who provoked organized labor by pushing
collective-bargaining curbs through the Legislature. Tens of
thousands of protesters gathered at the capital in February and
March, and $43 million was spent on recall campaigns against
state senators who supported Walker’s efforts.

“This is simply the shorts before the feature,” said
Mordecai Lee, a political scientist at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “The presumption was that the steam was
out of the recall movement. It turns out that wasn’t the case.”

The Arnolds are part of a volunteer army of 5,000 who
defied Walker’s predictions by collecting since mid-November
more than 507,000 signatures, 33,000 shy of the minimum to
authorize an ouster vote next year.

On The Way

“The people of Wisconsin have said enough is enough,”
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate said yesterday in
suburban Milwaukee after announcing the signature totals and the
goal of bringing the total to 720,000 during the next month.
“We are well on our way.”

Recall advocates have until Jan. 17 to collect the names.
The Government Accountability Board of Wisconsin will review the
signatures after they are submitted. The board has said it will
need 31 days to count them.

“We have no doubt the Democrats are rallying their left-wing base around their blatant power grab for the governor’s
mansion,” Ben Sparks, communications director for the
Republican Party of Wisconsin, said in a statement.

Walker, whose office offered no comment on yesterday’s
announcement, is running television ads defending his actions.
The Friends of Scott Walker campaign said yesterday that it
raised $5.1 million in the most recent reporting period.

Not So Quiet

In August, Walker predicted during an interview with
Bloomberg News that voters had “had it” with recalls and that
by year-end “things will quiet down.”

Only two U.S. governors have been recalled from office,
Grey Davis of California in 2003, and Lynn Frazier of North
Dakota in 1921. John McAdams, a political scientist at Marquette
University in Milwaukee, was among those who predicted recall
organizers would fail to force a third.

“I was wrong,” McAdams said in a telephone interview from
his office. “There’s a lot of bitterness toward Scott Walker.”

It’s energizing people like the Arnolds, who were among the
tens of thousands at the Capitol in February and March. “We
were just outraged, and the outrage continues,” Peggy Arnold
said.

In Platteville, a southwest Wisconsin community of 11,200,
Jerry Bartels, 60, a retired teacher, runs the recall operation
there in a small office above a grocery store.

“I’ve gathered 80 or 90 signatures,” Bartels said. “I’ve
not had anybody hassle me, other than the occasional middle-finger salute. I understand there are two sides to it.”